Jan. 5—There’s been little change to an extended dry spell that has dropped water levels to rarely seen lows in the region’s reservoirs.

But water customers who’ve been asked to cut back on their use are doing their job, according to municipal authority officials.

Customers have been conserving, said Michael Kukura, manager of the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County.

“While it is difficult to state the true impact, (customer) efforts, along with operational changes in the system, have helped to reduce the impact on the (Beaver Run) reservoir,” he said.

In all, about 4 million fewer gallons per day are being removed from the reservoir, Kukura said.

The source of the water coming out of your faucet plays a big role in whether you’ll be asked to cut back.

For example, customers whose water comes from the Beaver Run Reservoir or Ethel Springs Lake are being asked to reduce their use. But for those serviced by the Allegheny or Youghiogheny rivers, there are no restrictions.

It comes down to the amount of precipitation that falls in a specific area where it can drain into a body of water.

Watershed challenges

Precipitation descends from high to low elevation in a basin-like land form known as a watershed, according to the Pennsylvania Environmental Council’s Watershed Atlas. That precipitation makes its way into soil, groundwater and streams, and eventually larger bodies of water.

The Allegheny River watershed is 11,700 square miles and the drainage basin for the Youghiogheny River is 1,715 square miles. They are exponentially larger than the 36.49 square miles where precipitation must fall to make it into the Beaver Run Reservoir.

“The lack of precipitation over several seasons has prevented the reservoir from recovering when

it typically would,” Kukura said.

The authority pulls water from Beaver Run Reservoir and the Youghiogheny River.

Mandatory conservation measures for more than 56,000 Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County customers were enacted last month as water levels in the 1,058-acre Beaver Run Reservoir remain below normal.

The move for customers north of Route 30 came as the level of the reservoir in Bell and Washington townships hit 1,033 feet Dec. 18, almost 10 feet below the December average. It had been holding steady at 1,032.5 feet for the past several days before dipping slightly to 1,032.4 on Thursday.

About 2,600 customers of the Derry Borough Municipal Authority are under voluntary conservation measures. That started Dec. 1 when the state Department of Environmental Protection placed Westmoreland County under a drought watch.

Officials of both authorities agree that dry weather is the primary culprit impacting water levels. National Weather Service meteorologist Lee Hendricks said the region’s total precipitation for 2023 was 32.64 inches. Average annual precipitation is 39.61 inches.

Derry Borough Municipal Authority manager Ronald Seich Jr. said all of the water for customers comes from 30-acre Ethel Springs Lake, which was down 116 inches in 2023. That dip came after the lake recovered from 2022, when it was down 103 inches.

“This is the lowest I’ve seen it in eight years,” he said.

Both Seich and MAWC officials attribute the issue to a lack of precipitation in the specific areas needed to feed the reservoirs. Rain and snow in the past couple of weeks haven’t made much of a difference because the ground is so dry, it just soaks up the precipitation, Seich said.

“There’s hardly anything coming in,” he said.

River resources

But the resources are flowing as normal elsewhere. Jim Matta, manager at the Municipal Authority of the City of New Kensington, said the authority serves 15,500 customers in neighboring communities, including Arnold and Lower Burrell, with water from the Allegheny River.

“We’re not having any issues with the quantity or quality of water,” Matta said.

The same goes for the Pittsburgh Water & Sewage Authority, which also pulls its water from the Allegheny River and uses reservoirs to hold it. Allegheny County is not under a state drought watch. The authority serves a population of 520,000 with 80,500 drinking water customers, according to a spokesperson who added that river levels typically are consistent thanks to the system of locks and dams.

The Allegheny River flows south for 325 miles starting in northern Pennsylvania and is fed by numerous streams and other bodies of water. The same goes for the 132-mile-long Youghiogheny River, which runs north from West Virginia and Maryland before emptying into the Monongahela River.

The Yough River and Indian Creek supplies water to MAWC’s Indian Creek plant near Connellsville and customers south of Route 30. Water from that plant has been pushed farther north to lessen the burden on Beaver Run Reservoir.

The reservoir typically recovers in late fall and the months after as water consumption decreases and precipitation increases with wintry weather and a rainy spring, Kukura said. In 2023, precipitation was down nearly 2 inches at the reservoir, according to charts on the authority’s website.

“Last winter, we did not have any snow pack coming into the spring,” he said.

Customers under the conservation order were asked to reduce their water use by 5% to 10%. The authority has no plans to penalize or seek enforcement of the order like it last did in 1991.

During the conservation orders, local fracking companies are prohibited from taking water out of the reservoir, something they did only twice in 2023, amounting to 1% of water taken from the reservoir. Spokespeople from CNX and Olympus did not immediately respond to messages.

MAWC and Derry Borough Municipal Authority are keeping an eye out for leaks. In Derry, that means using employee ears and electronic devices to listen for them and get any they find repaired quickly.

“We’re trying to catch anything we can find right now,” Seich said, adding the authority may seek help in doing that from an outside company.

Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Renatta by email at rsignorini@triblive.com or via Twitter .